Saint Mary’s Earns Multiple Honors in International Design Awards Competition
The 2024 University and College Design Association Awards bestows a pair of accolades: for SMC’s Brand Identity Guidelines and for a very spooky photo of librarian Norm Partridge.
Saint Mary’s College of California has been recognized with multiple honors in the 2024 University and College Design Association Awards Program. The College’s Brand Identity Guidelines, developed by the Office of Marketing and Communications in concert with the SMC community last year, earned a silver award. And a photograph by SMC photographer Francis Tatem of librarian Norm Partridge received an award of excellence in the competition.
The awards were presented on September 26 at the UCDA Design Conference, which brought together creative professionals from throughout North America and beyond.
Silver Award: Telling the Saint Mary’s Story
The SMC Brand Identity Guidelines articulate how the College can convey in a clear and consistent way, in images and words, the rich and diverse answers to the question: “What comes to mind when someone says ‘Saint Mary’s College of California’?”
The new guidelines for digital and print media introduced a single logo to be used university-wide, along with updated fonts, colors, design approaches, messaging, storytelling, and more—including guidelines for video, photography, and social media. The collaborative project drew on the professional experience Marketing & Communications team members brought from years of award-winning work in higher education, business, and other fields.
“How people see, hear, and experience Saint Mary’s all contribute to the ways they perceive what the College is—from Lasallian identity to the student experience.”
—SMC President Roger Thompson
“How people see, hear, and experience Saint Mary’s all contribute to the ways they perceive what the College is—from Lasallian identity to the student experience,” says Saint Mary’s President Roger Thompson. “So we want to convey a clear and consistent identity across channels and platforms to support and establish positive recognition of SMC—now and in the future. Knowing how important that is, it is wonderful to see the work in the Brand Identity Guidelines by this team at SMC receive further national recognition for what they are doing to benefit the College.”
Indeed, this is not the first national award the Brand Identity Guidelines have received. Last spring, they were recognized with a Gold Award in the Collegiate Advertising Awards Program.
The Night Guy: Norm Partridge—Librarian by night. Writer of scary stories by day.
A spooky photo in the stacks of the SMC Library won an award of excellence in the UCDA Design Awards. Francis Tatem’s photograph for the story “The Night Guy: Norm Partridge—Librarian by night. Writer of scary stories by day” earned recognition in the news and editorial category for photography.
Norm Partridge has been a librarian for a quarter century. He is also an award-winning author of mystery and horror novels and stories. Last year his novel Dark Harvest—a Halloween horror tale—made its way to the screen courtesy MGM Studios and director David Slade.
Coast to Coast Competition
For over 20 years, the UCDA Design Awards Competition has recognized the best of exceptional design and creative work as part of a mission to promote design excellence, support educational institutions, and drive the exchange of ideas and information relating to the unique role creatives play in education and the world. The awards are judged by a hand-picked panel of peer jurors composed of designers, design educators, photographers, and illustrators working in or doing a significant portion of their work for educational institutions.
For the UCDA Design Awards this year, judges evaluated 950 entries and awarded a total of 220 honors: 25 Gold, 63 Silver, and 132 Awards of Excellence, along with 102 Honorable Mentions. The competition drew entries from coast to coast—from Maine to Washington, Montreal to Salt Lake City. Winners included major research universities, art schools, and design firms—including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of Notre Dame, Oberlin College, Carnegie Mellon University, and University of California, Davis.
